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The time has come, game player, to stop your compulsive jabbing of fire buttons, slip out of your over-used space capsule and carefully, very carefully enter this fabulous underwater world.

Imagine a vast ocean bed hiding measureless wealth; dark waters inhabited by sharks, squid, barracuda, electric eels, giant clams, killer jellyfish and hungry shoals of fish; a guarded passage which leads to undersea caverns of frightening complexity. Begin your Scuba Dive. But be on your guard...

Believe it or not, this program will take you on an adventure in which you will not shoot anything, nor experience any particularly fast action. Yet you will be totally absorbed. And even if your first attempts result in early death (they will!), you won't hesitate to re-enter the water.

Let's start at the beginning. On-screen is a boat floating in shallow waters. At the touch of a key, the diver goes over the side. Making him swim is simple. Two keys to accelerate and slow down; two more to rotate him so that he heads in the right direction.

Kicking his legs gently, the diver moves towards the sea-bed. As he nears the bottom of the screen, the picture changes to reveal what's below. For at any one moment, only a small fragment of the underwater terrain can be depicted on screen.

The diver is looking for treasure. And scattered on the sea-bed are oysters which open and shut. If he can touch them when they're open, he can pick up the pearls they conceal. But it's a delicate operation. If he's not careful he will crash into the rock, knock himself unconscious and drop all the treasure he's collected.

To be safe, the treasure must be returned to the boat. But when the diver returns to the surface he finds the boat has drifted and is nowhere to be seen.

He may have a long swim to find it and his oxygen level is falling all the time. There are far greater hazards ahead, for the waters are teeming with life, and meeting any of it is fatal.

From the safe position of an armchair, the creatures are wonderful to behold. There are more than ten different types and they're incredibly lifelike. They swim smoothly across the screen, and then suddenly turn round in beautiful 3D effect. The sharks and squid in particular are frighteningly real.

Once the diver has found all the oyster pearls, he has a more dangerous mission to complete. In one location on the ocean bed is an octopus guarding the entrance to a deeper cavern. As the octopus moves his tentacles up and down, it's possible to slip past him. The cavern contains more creatures, including giant clams which hide even greater treasure.

But the game's real challenge lies in the final mission which involves going past a second octopus into the really deep waters. Here there are numerous narrow passages through the rock and they're different every time you play.

If you can find the right ones and swim through them safely, you will come across three treasure chests.

Each of these contains more than you can carry, so to empty them you will have to make several trips, going right back up to the boat each time.

You'll also need to keep renewing your oxygen supply from cannisters you may (or may not) find hidden in the passages. Fact is, it'll be a miracle if you get back alive.

Many computer games demand little more than fast reactions and finger co-ordination. You get a short burst of high-adrenaline action - and then you're dead.

Scuba Dive is different. Instead of having 101 things hurtling at you which you must shoot or avoid, you have a much longer and ultimately more challenging quest.

Rather than scoring every time you do something successfully, you only get points when treasure is returned to the boat. This greatly adds to the game's compulsiveness and frustration!

It means you can adopt one of several different strategies, for example returning to the surface regularly, or collecting as much treasure as you can carry (with the risk of losing it all).

The program avoids a fault of many games which make you go through the same early stages every time you play. In Scuba Dive you can head straight for the deep passages if you so wish, and save the easier points for later.

Other nice features are four different skill levels, user-definable keys and the ability to save the high score table on tape, making the game suitable for ongoing club competitions. What's more, the cassette includes an instruction leaflet offering fuller directions than usual.

Scuba Dive isn't perfect. As in many Spectrum games, the sound is limited. And it would have been nicer to have the screen scrolling smoothly when changing locations instead of simply cutting to the new position.

Despite these quibbles, the game is incredibly addictive. So if you fancy settling back for a long nail-biting adventure, you'll find Scuba Dive is very, very special.